Stars and Stripes and Sufjan

The first time I saw Sufjan Stevens he played in a church in Madison, Wisconsin. Despite the church’s every nook and cranny being crammed with the hundreds of bodies in attendance, you could hear a pin drop. At the end of the show, we were rewarded with Sufjan’s revision of the National Anthem. It gets a little political towards the end. We Madisonians were a little weepy.

A couple of years later, I saw him perform in San Francisco, and I wanted to hear him play the song again. So I passed a note to the stage requesting it on behalf of his Madison fans. He read the note and played the song.